Forgiven Not Forgotten
by maggieck
Summary: A look at how the loss of Mrs. Landingham may have affected someone else.


Disclaimers: Characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, not to me. A very special thank you to my beta and wingman Shelley she knows why. :)   
Spoilers: 18th & Potomac & Two Cathedrals  
Archive: Sure, just let me know where.  
Rating: PG-13  
Synopsis: A look at how the loss of Mrs. Landingham may have affected someone else.  
  
Regarding feedback it seems I'm experiencing diminishing returns in this regard; the more I post the less feedback I receive. I really do appreciate hearing what people think, even if they hate my point of view. Thanks, and please send to maggieck@earthlink.net  
  
  
Forgiven, Not Forgotten  
By Maggieck  
  
She walked up to the tombstone slowly, a small spray of forget-me-nots in her hand. She knelt down next to the small plot and laid the flowers near the headstone. She'd never been big on cemeteries, as a kid growing up her friends used to think it was great laughs to hang out in the local cemetery on Halloween nights, but she'd thought it was silly and always found something better to do. But today here she was in this cemetery. She wasn't sure why but as this date approached she'd felt a need to be here.  
  
The journey that brought her to this cemetery had started 10 years ago, she'd been out with a few friends in DC and someone thought it would be cool to head to one of the Georgetown bars. One of the things you learned quickly as a freshman in Washington DC was that the bars all allowed you in if you were at least eighteen but wouldn't serve you. Although that was never really a problem; getting served. They'd already had a few drinks when somebody thought it would be fun to go see the monuments at night. She still has nightmares that wake her up screaming, all because she offered to drive. She'd been going too fast and didn't see the light change, she'd gone flying through the intersection and right into a blue car. The other driver had been killed instantly. She herself had suffered only a sprained wrist and some cuts and bruises. The other passengers in her car had also been fine. After all - everyone knows drunks bounce.  
  
Slowly, haltingly she began to speak aloud to the silence; Hi, I'm not really sure why I'm here. I just felt like I needed to be here today. I'd love to say that the mistake that brought us here was the last one I made but the more I think about it the more I think it was the first in a long line of them. Did you know that the President ordered I wasn't to be charged with vehicular manslaughter? At the time my parents and I were so grateful that I wouldn't be going to jail that we didn't take in what that really meant. Now though, I realize that his "forgiveness" back then was more like a life sentence. If I'd gone to jail back then I think the last ten years would have been much easier. I think sitting in a cell for a few months or years would have taught me the enormity of what I had done. But instead I was ordered to seek treatment & serve probation. I thought I could just put this behind me as a tragic accident and move on. Over the years since then, I've learned that President Bartlet was an especially spiritual man. I think one report even had it that he'd considered the priesthood until he met his wife. Learning that has always made me wonder if he knew exactly what he was doing when he got involved with my case. Was he just following his own morality of not judging someone else & let those without sin cast the first stone? Or did he know, that his forgiveness would force me to realize the magnitude of the consequences of my actions?  
  
But back then I didn't go to jail, I went to AA and saw my probation officer. I tried to go back to school and get on with my life, to put this 'accident' behind me. Looking back now I can't believe how stupid I was. People fell into two groups back then; friends who became enemies and would no longer have anything to do with me and enemies who pretended to be friends. I learned quickly not to say anything to anyone that I didn't want printed on a supermarket tabloid in 36 pt font. After that semester I moved back home with my parents and decided to take some time off. I figured I'd take off a semester or two and then when things had calmed down some I'd go back to school. Trying to find a job with only two semesters of college and a drunk driving conviction that everyone knew the details of was nearly impossible. Eventually I got a night shift cashier job at the local supermarket. To say that life was depressing would be a gross understatement. Eventually I made a few friends at work and we got into the habit of going for a drink after work when we'd get off at one in the morning. It didn't seem to occur to me that I was still underage. I wasn't driving; I'd lost my license as a condition of probation and my hometown was big enough that there was always a bus or something to get you where you needed to go.  
  
Months passed and I continued to pretend that what happened that May night was no big deal, I'd made a mistake but I was going to get on with my life. One of my first big wake-up calls came when I heard from a college friend that my old room-mate and best friend had gotten married the week-end before. Not only had I not been invited, I hadn't heard from her since I'd left school. I looked around my life and realized that I was going nowhere fast, I'd come home to get my life together but I'd fallen into a rut of mindlessness that was allowing me to pretend that nothing had happened. So I decided, break's over I'm going back to school. I called the registrar's office, jumped through their hoops, and went back to school. I didn't realize it at the time but you can't go back home and school, for the short time I'd been there had been home.  
  
The most difficult part of freshman year is not the classes or managing your time. It's moving the family of parents and siblings out of the front of your sphere of influence and onto the back burner. Your room-mates and classmates become more than just best friends. They're the ones there for all the highs & lows of college and becoming an adult. But by leaving school, I'd left that family and they moved on without me. By the time I got back to college, my friends were all a year and a half ahead of me. We no longer had any classes together. Most of them had moved off campus into apartments that had no room for anyone else. I was trapped in the dorms, too old to really connect with the freshman and sophomores, who were already forming their own exclusive groups. Once again, I fell into the cracks. After a while, I did manage to find a group to hang out with, and took up smoking. I was finally 21 and spent quite a bit of time with my new acquaintances in local and then increasingly, not so local bars. Eventually I was back at home again and out of school. This time I'd flunked out. It's not so easy attending class and writing papers when you wake up every morning either still drunk or hung-over.   
  
I got a new dead-end job and moved into a dingy little apartment with two of the people from the grocery store where I had worked before going back to college. When I left school for good my parents expected me to move back home again, but I insisted I was too old to be living at home. I don't think they really understood what a mess I was by then, I'd used so many excuses to explain flunking out that they had no idea what the truth was. I think they grabbed onto each new excuse like a lifeline and cobbled together a story they could tell themselves & not have to question too much.   
  
The next few years were a blur of crappy jobs, crappy apartments, crappy relationships and lots and lots of bottles. Back before the accident, I had my one drink. I always stuck with Amaretto Sours because I didn't like the taste of alcohol. By this time I was drinking anything I could get my hands on. Taste didn't matter anymore. As long as I couldn't think, I was happy.  
  
I think most drunks agree that eventually you hit rock bottom and realize you can't go any lower, that if you don't get help you're going to die. I'd love to say that rock bottom was the day my friends and family stood around me and told me that they loved me and couldn't stand to see me throwing my life away like this. The fact is that's a pretty scenario for the movies but by this point I'd pushed the people who cared about me so far away that all I had left was people to drink with - when I could scrape the cash together to actually go to a bar rather than just buying a new bottle on the way home from work.  
  
My rock bottom was fairly boring as these things go. I was standing in the kitchen wrapping sections of newspaper around empty liquor bottles so that they wouldn't clink when I took out the trash. I may have been a barely functioning drunk but I still had some pride, or was it denial? At this point I still thought other people didn't know how alcohol had consumed my days & nights. I was wrapping when I glanced at the date in the corner of the newsprint and nearly dropped the bottle on my foot; May 9, 2006. It had been five years since the accident, and all I'd done with my life since then was become a drunk. I grabbed my keys and walked out of the apartment. I think I was headed for a bar to try to forget it all over again. I have no idea how I ended up walking into the middle of an AA meeting in that community center, but I had the presence of mind to sit down and not leave. I have no idea how many meetings I came to before I said anything to anyone.   
  
To this day I can't remember making a conscious decision to stop drinking, but since I'm no longer living my life from the bottom of the bottle, I have proof that I did. Eventually I found myself a sponsor and dumped all the bottles. I started to put my life back together, went back to school part time. As things started to come together I found a better job with a future, a better neighborhood, and a few steady friends. My family and I are re-connecting. It hasn't been easy - I've slipped off the wagon a time or two but I've always made it back on before I got left behind again.   
  
It's May 9, again but now even more years have passed since the last time this date held a significance for me. As I remember the circumstances that brought me here today, I think I finally understand now why I'm here. It's finally time for me to accept responsibility for bringing us to this point. On May 9, 2001 I decided to drink and then get in my car and drive. I drove through a red light and killed a woman who I have learned was a beautiful person who had lost a lot in her life but still kept moving forward. I can't ask you to forgive me for my actions but I can say how sorry I am, and that I finally understand it wasn't an accident. I made a decision that cost you your life and in another sense mine. I've wasted a lot of years since then but I'm going to try to make up for that. I start work at MADD on Monday, now that I've got myself together I think it's time I actually earn the gift of forgiveness I was given so long ago.   
  
The woman stood up and dusted off her knees. She walked away without looking back and never saw the man who had walked up just as she had begun speaking and stood out of sight listening to her words. As the woman got into her car and drove off he too knelt and placed some flowers on the grave.  
  
"Well Mrs. Landingham looks like you've had some company already this morning." He got comfortable and continued speaking to his old friend about what had happened in his life since he'd last visited. He didn't say anything about the woman he had overheard but he did tell the story to his wife when he returned home. She told her mother about it who mentioned it to an old family friend.   
  
The next Monday morning the woman started a new job and the morning mail delivered a simple cream envelope, in with the other materials. Inside was a matching cream card inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice;  
  
"...The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes..."  
  
  
The card was signed simply, Leo McGarry and there was a five year AA chip in the envelope.   
  
End.  
  



End file.
